The Other World
by Shadsie
Summary: [Requiem from the Darkness . The 100 Stories] Momosuke introspection. The young writer thinks upon life, death and the realm between the two.


Disclaimer: "Requiem from the Darkness" aka "The 100 Stories" is copyright to Natsuhiko Kyogoku. I intend no profit off this fanfiction. It is done merely for love of this interesting novel-based anime.

I'll honestly be plesantly surprised if anyone reads and reviews this thing. I only know one other "Requiem from the Darkness" fan - the person who recommened it to me.

Some spoilers lie within.

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THE OTHER WORLD

Yamaoka Momosuke sat alone in the empty room, a tablet of empty pages before him. His brush was poised over an inkwell. His fingers were cramped. He had been sitting like this for over an hour. The blank page of his barren book stared back at him, taunting him with its emptiness.

Momosuke let out a sound of frustration. "Where to start?" he asked himself, "How do I make any of it make sense?"

The One-Hundred Stories, his dream, refused to come to life. He couldn't even get out a short riddle today.

"Maybe my publisher is right," he said to himself. The little frog of a man always had choice words for Momosuke whenever they saw each other – demands, jeers and other things said to make sure the young writer knew he was utterly worthless. Momosuke figured every writer had to start somewhere, but he often wondered if he should have stayed with the family business.

Ever since he was a child, he'd loved stories. His passion was to write and collect stories. Why then, he wondered, was he constantly accosted with writer's block?

He held his brush above the open page of his tablet again. He thought first to write about the Azuki Arai, then the tale of the vile horse farmer he'd met, who fell under things that mirrored the curse of Salty Choji.

He would have written about the girl he'd met in the fishing village, or of the Katabira Crossroads, but his hand shook when he thought about those stories. He dropped the brush and it bounced upon the tablet, leaving ink stains on the paper. Momosuke stared at them. The ink was black, but the splotches reminded him of splatters of blood.

He could not write about any of those incidents. He had encountered many strange and horrifying things in his recent travels, but his book was to be composed of ghost stories.

While many things of a strange nature had happened, Momosuke could not put his finger upon any incident, for certain, that had been entirely supernatural. Every ghost and demon he'd met had a human face.

The young writer closed his eyes and thought about it. He did not know who Mataichi, Nagamimi and Ogin were, other than the names they'd given him. He did not know what they were. He knew that all of the people they'd brought judgment upon were people, not specters.

The three outlaws were… killers. They killed people. Momosuke had always been a gentle soul. He loved scary stories but did not believe in violence. Yet, he had helped the Mataichi Gang. He'd allowed himself to be a part of their plans. He had even done a fine job of acting.

The people they had killed or driven to their deaths had deserved it. Momosuke thought about the gang's victims, the horrible things they had done and kept hidden that had come out in the end. They were murderers that had not been caught until then. They were killers whose crimes lay hidden in the darkness.

The manager of the Willow Inn had developed a separate personality that allowed him to murder his wives and children. The fox-hunting bandit had developed a pure lust for killing both animals and people. The lord of the horse farm had discarded the last small part of his human soul when he killed and devoured the flesh of his brother.

The caged samurai, who had cut down an innocent child, was a tanuki, after all.

Momosuke felt a sense of sorrow over every incident he witnessed where the Mataichi Gang had been involved, but, in the end, he felt that the trio's victims had received what they deserved.

The author picked up his brush and set it next to the inkwell. He gathered up his tablet and put it away. He did not suppose he would get any writing done today. He lay on his mat and gazed at the ceiling. Memories came to his mind relentlessly.

Darkness was all around him. The world was filled with people's cruel and selfish behavior.

He tried at life in the world of the living and was failing miserably. He could not be a businessman. He had no head for it. He wanted to pursue his dreams. He wanted to have something truly supernatural happen to him. He was a writer who could not write. When he walked down the street of any city, he would see the people happy and full of vitality.

He hated it. He hated that vitality because it was something he could not have. Momosuke was, in a word, bored. Everything around him was mind-numbingly mundane.

"I want to be like them," he said to himself. "Mataichi told me that we live in different worlds. What did he mean by that? Do they really live in the space between the living and the dead?"

Ever since he was a child listening to ghost tales, he wondered what it would be like to live in the twilight between life and death. Mataichi, Nagamimi, Ogin – they lived in this twilight. They were allowed much more liberty than everyday people. They could bring justice upon the guilty. They could avenge atrocities.

Momosuke was a kind man, but within him burned a sense of vengeance. He did not like killing, but he was overwhelmed with the idea that some people did deserve to die horribly – those people that had murdered others, the monsters he'd met with human faces.

Mataichi and the others appeared, always, to be trying to protect him from their business. Only recently, it seemed had they been finding real use for him. Momosuke sighed. Perhaps Mataichi was telling him that he was too soft-hearted for the work they did.

Momosuke was bored and tired. He was tired of constant failure and of the happiness all around him that he could not seem to grasp. He wanted to live in the shadows and in the realm of the supernatural. He wanted to be with Ogin. He wanted to weed out evil in the souls of men and bring it into judgment. He wanted to embrace the darkness in his own heart.

The writer got up and brought out his tablet and brush again. Perhaps, he thought, the key to becoming a part of the twilight world was to sever his ties with the land of the living. He stared, once again, at his blank tablet. He wasn't yet ready to cut his ties with the world of life. All he could do right now was to try to write about the world of darkness.

END.

Shadsie, 2006


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